Medical advances make it increasingly possible for children with previously fatal illness to live and thrive. However, a significant number still experience repeated operations, hospitalizations and invasive procedures, or need special care at home. Many do so with little or no intervention to help them and their families cope with the emotional stresses involved. Serious medical illness is, therefore, increasingly recognized as an important early risk factor for emotional disturbance.
A variety of interventions have been developed to assist patients and their families with the hope of improving the resiliency of both. These include pre-admission hospital preparatory programs, meetings between families and physicians, books and videos for children of different ages and psychiatric consultation. Yet it is clear that the majority of families are not able to avail themselves of these resources before coming to the hospital.
One additional and potentially underutilized source of psychological support is the community of patients and families who have experienced hospitalization. However, in spite of a general willingness to share experiences, communication among patients and families is usually limited. To facilitate this process, the use of computer technology to record, organize and display stories about the experiences of families with children who have been treated for serious illness has been proposed. Children and their families are asked to record text and multimedia vignettes describing some aspect of their illness, coping strategies or care that might be useful to others. The collection of text and vignettes is referred to as an experience journal.
A difficulty arises in providing access to the items in the experience journal. The text items are highly unstructured and differ greatly in style, content and sophistication. The items may be prepared by anyone from a physician or a parent to a young child. Thus, organizing the text items for access is extremely difficult. The user group likewise may vary from medical professionals to parents to very young children. Thus, the text items must be available to users with limited computer skills. Because the text items are unstructured and differ greatly in content, existing techniques of index, classification and search are not useful. Accordingly, there is a need for methods and apparatus for organizing and providing access to an experience journal which includes unstructured text items relating to a topic.